Get Me Out of Here!!

January 13, 2012

I began with a hunger for direct experience and a belief in the impending collapse of ‘modern’ civilization.  I did not want to be buried in the rubble of a disintegrating culture that was consuming non-renewable resources at an accelerating rate while poisoning the air, water and soil with thousands of untested chemical formulations.  The whole stinking mess, so sensible and rational when viewed from the inside, appeared as sheer madness when examined from the outside.

I wanted out.  I wanted a ‘natural’ experience.  I wanted to taste the earth, revisit the old pathways, learn how to grow food, create shelter, be self-sufficient; live without electricity, telephones, newspapers, radio, alarm clocks, money (never figured that one out!).

Those burning desires led me out of the city and into the countryside: the back roads of Lanark County, Ontario.  I found what I sought up on the Canadian Shield, a land of granite outcroppings and forested hillsides, crossed by streams and full of small lakes.  I had a partner as crazy as I was, several small children and soon a few animals: laying hens, meat chickens, milk goats and a pair of workhorses.



Just living became a full time job. We broke ground to plant seeds, nurtured the plants, harvested and preserved food, hauled water from the well, gathered firewood for the winter, collected eggs, milked the goats, fed the horses……….   Self-sufficiency was way more involved than I had expected.  We never did get to the part where we kept sheep to harvest the wool to spin the thread to weave the cloth to make the clothes to keep us warm.  Or kill the cow, then skin it for the hide, then tan the hide, then cut the leather, then make the shoes.  Not to mention lighting (candles? Kerosene? Propane?) or soap (start with wood ashes and fat….) or transportation (how far can a horse travel in a day?) or medicine (herbs? Plants? Dentists? Penicillin?).
I began to develop a grudging admiration for the gifts of civilization, but was still determined to do it my way.